Page 1 of T is for…

Chapter 1

The 3-D rendering spun slowly on the screen, a mess of lines and numbers. Unless you knew what you were looking at.

Nathan tapped the screen and leaned in over the dark-haired woman’s shoulder, reading the technical notes attached to the slowly rotating image of what looked like a very fat pen.

“Based off a tattoo pen.” Tara put two fingers on the screen and zoomed in. “A tattoo isn’t actually how the subcutaneous biosensors would be applied, but calling them ‘smart tattoos’ and this a tattoo pen makes it easier for the doctors to understand.” She looked up over her shoulder at him, her face a familiar half-exasperated expression.

Nathan chuckled, feeling her pain. Doctors were great. Doctors were the ones who actually used the biomedical products they developed.

Doctors also had zero patience with technical information. Hence reducing state-of-the-art medical innovation to “smart tattoo.”

But “smart tattoo” did sound cool. Damn near everything Tara’s team developed was cool.

Tara Patel, PhD, was smart, driven, witty, a little stubborn, and also his oldest friend.

And he was about to actively ignore her.

Tara hiked her bag up on her shoulder, still holding her tablet with one hand, the screen tilted so he could see it. For a second, he wondered if he should offer to hold her bag or help her take it off her shoulder and set it on the ground where his own weekend bag waited.

Would that be weird?

Probably.

Tara would set the bag down if she wanted to.

“What type of system is running the data?” he asked, reaching over her shoulder to touch the screen and zoom out once more.

“Not my department.” Tara smiled. “I don’t?—”

The large front doors of Las Palmas opened, a group of three people entering together. A red-haired woman wearing soft feminine clothes that Nathan was fairly sure were stylish entered first, an overnight bag caught in the crook of her elbow. She was laughing and joking with the man who held the door open for her and the brunette who entered two steps behind her.

The brunette wore a trim suit that made Nathan twitch, because she looked like either a lawyer or investor. Both groups of people that Nathan did his best to avoid, though his bosses liked to bring them by his office and make him show off the multicolored hand-drawn system maps that were always his first step during the initial coding.

He flipped his attention back to his best friend, but Tara was watching the redheaded woman.

Nathan had no clue what the expression on her face meant. She didn’t look upset. At least he didn’t think she was upset. It was disconcerting, given how long they’d been friends, that in this moment he didn’t know what she was thinking.

Then again, he hadn’t known she was a sexual submissive until several years ago when he’d run into her here at Las Palmas, LA’s most exclusive BDSM club.

Nathan’s eyes flicked to the doors that led into the club proper, his shoulders tensing. The foyer where they now stood was the transition place between the outside world and Las Palmas. This wasn’t the first time they’d stopped here to chat, but it always left him with this itchy feeling that he was walking on the edge of something dangerous.

Tara shook her head once, looking away from the other members who’d pushed through the doors that open off the foyer. “What was I saying?” Once more, she looked up at him, and for a traitorous moment, his brain started to picture things it shouldn’t. He stopped, because for fucks sake, he shouldn’t think about his best friend like that.

“I think you were going to be snobby about being a product developer rather than a backend systems person,” he said, maybe a little too quick.

Tara laughed, and the familiarity of the banter and her laugh made it easier to ignore where they were. “I’m not snobby about it.” She turned off the tablet, stuffing it into a side pocket of her bag.

“You’re a little snobby.”

“Only because I’m better than you.” One dark eyebrow arched.

Again, Nathan wrestled to keep his thoughts about his best friend appropriate for her status as his best friend.

“You’re jealous,” he declared, leaning back against the wall.

“Oh, this should be good. Why am I jealous?”

“Because I can sit in a nice air-conditioned office all day and drink tea whenever I want.” With anyone else, he would have said coffee, but Tara was a tea drinker.

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